Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe - Essay Example

Uncle Tom’s Cabin Many people feel they are familiar with the story of Uncle Tom’s Cabin written by Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852. For most people, however, the story is little more than a summary of its parts: A black slave on a Kentucky plantation, Tom, gets sold down the river away from his wife and children, saving a white girl on the way and becoming her family’s slave. Eventually, though, his kind master dies and Tom is sold to the vicious Simon Legree where he undergoes numerous trials attempting to stand up for the other slaves and to hold on to his Christian convictions. This streak of pride in him brings down greater punishments, finally resulting in Tom’s being beaten to death just as his former master shows up to purchase his freedom. If this isn’t the story people associate with the book, it is because they are thinking of its subplot, that of Eliza, a young slave woman on the same original Kentucky farm, who escapes with her son to make her way to Canada and freedom. Also having to overcome numerous obstacles, including a river of ice, Eliza and her son manage to meet up with Eliza’s husband George on the way and the three of them eventually arrive safely in freedom to reunite with long-lost family members. Focusing on the events of the story as mere events, though, forces a loss of much of its meaning. Throughout the book, Stowe attempted to show that black people experienced feelings to the same degree and for the same reasons as white people, to illustrate how black people were asked to endure inhuman suffering in the form of physical and sexual abuse as a result of their slavery and to urge white people to understand the need for racial equality in America. For many people of Stowe’s generation, it was strongly believed that black people did not have the same feelings that white people had, that they had a weaker sense of connection between generations and individuals and it was thus perfectly all right to separate mothers from children, for example, or husbands from wives with little or no warning and no hope of reunion. While the family prepares for Uncle Tom’s leaving, the scene is dragged out over several pages, repeatedly allowing Aunt Chloe to sob out her grief, rage over her anger and hopelessly put together her husband’s things for the last time. For Stowe, personal experience enabled her to gain an appreciation of the depth of the grief experienced by the majority of the black nation as their children were removed from their sides with no hope for future togetherness: While reflecting upon her experience tending to a dying infant, Stowe said “It was at his dying bed and at his grave that I learned what a poor slave mother may feel when her child is torn away from her” (Stowe, 1889: 198). However, to be sure the audience doesn’t miss the significance of this parting by misreading the practical concerns being attended to, Stowe inserts a narrative comment. “In order to appreciate the sufferings of the negroes sold south, it must be remembered that all the instinctive affections of that race are peculiarly strong. Their local attachments are very abiding. They are not naturally daring and enterprising, but home-loving and affectionate” (Stowe 93). Not only do black people feel to the same extent as white people, Stowe argues that they feel to an even greater extent. The introduction of Eliza as a quadroon immediately establishes the tacit admission that some form of sexual abuse regularly occurred in slave-holding states. A quadroon is a person who is only a quarter percent black, such as the child of a half-white, half-black woman and a white slave-owning master. “The less easily race can be read from [a light-skinned slave’s] flesh, the more clearly the white man’s repeated penetrations of the Black body are imprinted there” (52). This abhorrent forced relationship is also suggested later in the story as Susan and Emmeline lay in the slave warehouse: “Susan remembered the man’s looks and words. With a deadly sickness at her heart, she remembered how he had looked at Emmeline’s hands, and lifted up her curly hair, and pronounced her a first-rate article. Susan had been trained as a Christian, brought up in the daily reading of the Bible, and had the same horror of her child’s being sold to a life of shame that any other Christian mother might have; but she had no hope, - no protection” (Stowe, 1981: 328-329). Tom’s insistence that Cassy and Emmeline run away is based on his knowledge of the abuses they are suffering at the hands of Simon Legree and he suffers his own death as a result of this same man’s physical abuses. From the very beginning of the story, Stowe begins to illustrate the fallacies regarding slavery that were generally believed by people in the north. This is done as the first scene in the book involves two men haggling over the table regarding the ownership of people, such as Tom who has proven to be useful in managing the farm or Harry, who has proven entertaining to the two men as they attempt to come to an agreement. “She reminds us again and again, for example, that the slave has no substantial identity under the Southern laws (ironically, in a society which boasted of its domestic institutions there was not even legal validity to slave marriages)” (Duvall, 1963: 5). Thus, while Harry is Eliza’s son and valued by Mr. Shelby for this, he is also legal tender and therefore eligible for seizure by debt collectors should Mr. Shelby fail to come to an agreement with Haley. This is reinforced as the happy family of Uncle Tom is forced apart and as George Harris is forced to run away rather than ‘marry’ another woman at the orders of his master despite being married in the eyes of the Christian church to Eliza. Stowe provides a narrative explanation here as well, pointing out that this is not the rare event but is instead the norm: “So long as the law considers all these human beings, with beating hearts and living affections, only as so many things belonging to a master – so long as the failure, or misfortune, or imprudence, or death of the kindest owner, may cause them any day to exchange a life of kind protection and indulgence for one of hopeless misery and toil, - so long it is impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best regulated administration of slavery” (Stowe, 1981: 6). Lumping the concepts of failure, misfortune and imprudence together in the sketchily explained difficulties of Mr. Shelby that forces him to sell Tom and Harry, Stowe also provides example of how the death of an owner such as Mr. St. Clare can contribute to a situation in which the best of slaves might fall into the hands of someone like Simon Legree or Mr. Harris, George’s old master, who demand total subjection of the spirit, by the cruelest brute force if necessary, from their slaves, purposely ‘breaking their spirit’ as one might break a horse to saddle. “As readers we must stand in with the slave, seeing things largely from his perspective if not directly through his perception. In other words, our reading is controlled chiefly by the slave’s frame of reference – not the patriarch’s – and Mrs. Stowe’s insistent focus assures us in general and in detail of the slave’s equivalent humanity” (Duvall, 1969: 5). By telling the story from the black perspective, illustrating the realities of life in the south for black people yet couching everything in the narrative terms of white people, Stowe serves as interpreter and cultural attaché, forcing white people to recognize in black people the same elements of humanity they value in themselves. Through the story of this small family of black people who were torn apart by the institutions of American slavery and brought together again in part only as the result of their own tremendous efforts and incredible suffering, Stowe introduced America to the realities of the situation as it was experienced by the lowest of the members that lived it. By showing how black people shared many of the same emotions and strong connections to their families and friends as white people did, Stowe forced white people across the country to admit that perhaps some psychological harm was being done in forcing families to separate and in denying black people the legal rights afforded to white people. Once the acknowledgement was made toward the beginning of the story, Stowe then went on to prove the atrocities of slavery in the South, many of which went strongly against the Christian teachings that remained a fundamental element of most members of society at that time. The fact that the slaves themselves were such strong Christians further enabled white people to identify with the particular difficulties experienced by slaves in the south and elicited a great deal of empathy for them. Finally, by highlighting the various ways in which the black people were prevented from protecting themselves, keeping themselves together or demanding any form of humane treatment at all, Stowe forced a call to action across the nation, eventually causing even President Lincoln to hail her as the little woman who started the Civil War. Works Cited Duvall, Severn. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin: The Sinister Side of the Patriarchy.” The New England Quarterly. Vol. 36, N. 1, (March 1963): 3-22. Foreman, P. Gabrielle. “This Promiscuous Housekeeping: Death, Transgression and Homoeroticism in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Representations. N. 43, (Summer, 1993): 51-72. Stowe, Charles Edward. Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe Compiled from her Letters and Journals. Boston and New York, 1889. Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. New York: Bantam, 1981. Read More

For Stowe, personal experience enabled her to gain an appreciation of the depth of the grief experienced by the majority of the black nation as their children were removed from their sides with no hope for future togetherness: While reflecting upon her experience tending to a dying infant, Stowe said “It was at his dying bed and at his grave that I learned what a poor slave mother may feel when her child is torn away from her” (Stowe, 1889: 198). However, to be sure the audience doesn’t miss the significance of this parting by misreading the practical concerns being attended to, Stowe inserts a narrative comment.

“In order to appreciate the sufferings of the negroes sold south, it must be remembered that all the instinctive affections of that race are peculiarly strong. Their local attachments are very abiding. They are not naturally daring and enterprising, but home-loving and affectionate” (Stowe 93). Not only do black people feel to the same extent as white people, Stowe argues that they feel to an even greater extent. The introduction of Eliza as a quadroon immediately establishes the tacit admission that some form of sexual abuse regularly occurred in slave-holding states.

A quadroon is a person who is only a quarter percent black, such as the child of a half-white, half-black woman and a white slave-owning master. “The less easily race can be read from [a light-skinned slave’s] flesh, the more clearly the white man’s repeated penetrations of the Black body are imprinted there” (52). This abhorrent forced relationship is also suggested later in the story as Susan and Emmeline lay in the slave warehouse: “Susan remembered the man’s looks and words.

With a deadly sickness at her heart, she remembered how he had looked at Emmeline’s hands, and lifted up her curly hair, and pronounced her a first-rate article. Susan had been trained as a Christian, brought up in the daily reading of the Bible, and had the same horror of her child’s being sold to a life of shame that any other Christian mother might have; but she had no hope, - no protection” (Stowe, 1981: 328-329). Tom’s insistence that Cassy and Emmeline run away is based on his knowledge of the abuses they are suffering at the hands of Simon Legree and he suffers his own death as a result of this same man’s physical abuses.

From the very beginning of the story, Stowe begins to illustrate the fallacies regarding slavery that were generally believed by people in the north. This is done as the first scene in the book involves two men haggling over the table regarding the ownership of people, such as Tom who has proven to be useful in managing the farm or Harry, who has proven entertaining to the two men as they attempt to come to an agreement. “She reminds us again and again, for example, that the slave has no substantial identity under the Southern laws (ironically, in a society which boasted of its domestic institutions there was not even legal validity to slave marriages)” (Duvall, 1963: 5).

Thus, while Harry is Eliza’s son and valued by Mr. Shelby for this, he is also legal tender and therefore eligible for seizure by debt collectors should Mr. Shelby fail to come to an agreement with Haley. This is reinforced as the happy family of Uncle Tom is forced apart and as George Harris is forced to run away rather than ‘marry’ another woman at the orders of his master despite being married in the eyes of the Christian church to Eliza. Stowe provides a narrative explanation here as well, pointing out that this is not the rare event but is instead the norm: “So long as the law considers all these human beings, with beating hearts and living affections, only as so many things belonging to a master – so long as the failure, or misfortune, or imprudence, or death of the kindest owner, may cause them any day to exchange a life of kind protection and indulgence for one of hopeless misery and toil, - so long it is impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best regulated administration of slavery” (Stowe, 1981: 6).

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